Snippet 7 Here Lies a Wicked Man
Caught with her mouth open, Emaline stared down at the little man like a great crane eyeing a waterbug. Before she could speak, one of the deputies hurried to the pier.
“We’ve found something, Sheriff. I think you’ll want to see it, maybe take a picture before we bag it.”
Booker picked up his tripod and followed Emaline on Ringhoffer’s heels. They circled the house to a shady inlet where cattails sprouted at the water’s edge. Ringhoffer used his pointer to gently nudge aside the thick vegetation and reveal the officer’s prize: a round stick edged with red and brown feathers.
“Looks like the tail end of an arrow,” Booker said, testing the ground for a place to set the tripod.
“Exactly,” Ringhoffer murmured triumphantly.
Caught among the foliage, the arrow shaft floated in the shadows near the lake bank.
“Betcha a nickel,” Emaline shouted, “the pointy end of that thing is stuck in Chuck Fowler’s chest.”
CHAPTER 5
One of the exciting moments in photography for Booker was seeing an image develop on a piece of photo paper. This wasn’t possible in color photography, and now the new digital process took all the fun out of it. On the plus side, it was fast.
He loaded the sheriff’s memory card into the small laser printer. It would spit out all the images long before he finished packaging photos for the magazine and returned from the overnight drop in Bryan-College Station.
Downstairs, his buzzer sounded three quick jabs that he’d begun to recognize. He thumbed the intercom.
“I’m in the computer room, Emaline. What’s up?”
“Thought you were in a hurry to get to FedEx.”
“Which leaves me no time to stand here yammering.”
“Your clock’s wrong. Five minutes till the last pickup in Bryan. FedEx closes at six.”
Booker’s jaw tightened. He’d thought they stayed open until midnight, like the one in Houston. He’d missed his deadline.
His shoulders sagged as if a sack of rocks had settled on them. The moment Pup dragged that body from the lake he should’ve given in to fate and saved himself a whole day of anxiety. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the business side of commercial photography.
“Booker Krane! Are you dead up there?”
“Might as well be.”
“Well, pay attention. I said there’s a fellow in Masonville who has a single-engine Cessna. He can fly your pictures to the late pickup in Dallas.”
“Why would he do that?” Booker didn’t want to get his hopes up again.
“Why does anyone do anything these days? For money.”
Could it work? He grabbed a tray and began sorting the last of the interior shots.
“Come on up, Emaline. I just have to box these and save everything to a flash drive.” As he worked, slipping the photos into individual sleeves, a sense of pride relaxed his shoulder muscles a tad. He might suck at clock-watching, but he was darn good at the important stuff.
“Whatever possessed you to build a three-story house?” Emaline demanded, panting from her walk up the stairs.
“Figured I could use the exercise.”
“You’ll curse those stairs in a few years. You need an elevator.”
“Here, tuck these into that box there while I sort the last few.” The nine-color ink-jet, a finer quality than the laser printing Sheriff Ringhoffer’s crime scene shots, had shut off.
“How’d you make such a cockeyed mess out of this picture?” Emaline studied a digital image on his monitor.
He’d cued up the throwaway exterior shots but hadn’t stopped to look at them. There’d be plenty of time when he got back. But the photo on the screen gave him a jolt. Skewed off-center, the house stood too far to the left, with only bushes and a section of road in center frame. At the right, a figure streaked along the road.
He recalled now seeing Roxanna Larkspur in her red and blue jogging outfit. The next few frames were the ones he’d shot just before Pup upset the camera.
“That yellow blob near the pier must be Fowler’s shirt,” Emaline said. “The medical examiner in Houston verified Chuck was killed with an arrow.”
“How’d you get the M.E.’s report so fast?”
“He’s a friend of Coroner Birdwell, and I guess having a body shipped from here is more interesting than the ones from his own bailiwick. He dug out the arrow point, abroad-head, used for hunting. What kind of sadistic psycho would kill a man like that?”
